Heretic! Burn The Witch!

Here on the blog and in various other EMS forums, I frequently challenge conventional wisdom on the care we provide. Other bloggers, like Rogue Medic, do it better, and more extensively.

And in the responses to most of those missives, invariably there are a few who indignantly splutter, "B-b-but, that's not the way we learned it!"

I'ver said it before and I will say it again: The only constant in the practice of medical care is that it will change. We are continually evolving.

In her book, Declarations of a Dinosaur: 10 Things I've Learned As a Family Doctor, Dr. Lucy Hornstein writes, "Half of what is taught in medical school is wrong, but no one knows which half."

The same statement applies to paramedic education. Half of what we are taught is wrong, but you won't know which half until you've been in the field a few years.

And in that vein, everything we were taught about treating sickle cell crisis was wrong, too.

If your continuing education only consists of the crap regurgitated in refreshers every couple of years, you're doomed to repeating the treatment mistakes of the past.